The Puppet Looks for Lodgement
About The Puppet Looks for Lodgement
The stick figure Fantoche looks for a room. Paris has none. He tries the ponds, Heaven, and Hell, and is turned away, including by a devil whose furnaces are full. At the end he draws a house for himself.
Cast & crew
More about The Puppet Looks for Lodgement
Émile Cohl drew and directed the short. The French titles are La maison du Fantoche and Fantoche cherche un logement. It opened in France on May 6, 1921. It was his last film. A Gaumont DVD copy runs 8 minutes, tinted, with sound added later.
Themes
Background
The joke is a Paris room shortage. Fantoche is refused by landlords, then by Heaven and Hell, so the housing hunt becomes the whole plot.
Making
Cohl still works with a white background and a figure that stretches and splits. By 1921 American studios were using cels and fixed characters. He did not change methods for this reel.
Look
Cohl draws Fantoche in black line on a bare ground. The figure bends out of shape at each door, and the Hell sequence adds a crowd of demons.
Music
Silent in 1921. The Gaumont DVD copy is tinted and carries a soundtrack added for that edition.
Preservation
The short survives on the Gaumont DVD Le cinéma premier, volume 2, as an 8-minute tinted copy with added sound. The Cinémathèque de Toulouse catalogs that disc.
Notes
- Cohl was 64. He was born in 1857.
- Fantoche, his stick-man, goes back to the 1908 cartoons.
- The Cinémathèque de Toulouse holds the Gaumont DVD Le cinéma premier 1907–1916, volume 2, which includes this 1921 short.
Scenes
- Fantoche is shut out of one Paris door after another.
- A devil tells him the furnaces are full.
- He draws a little house and climbs into it.
Influenced by
- Émile Cohl's earlier Fantoche cartoons, beginning with Fantasmagorie (1908)
Also available
- Gaumont DVD, Le cinéma premier 1907–1916, volume 2 (Cinémathèque de Toulouse, DVD 806b)
